This AI Algorithm Learns Simple Tasks as Fast as We Do

Fig. 1. People can learn rich concepts from limited data. (A and B) A single example of a new concept (red boxes) can be enough information to support the (i) classification of new examples, (ii) generation of new examples, (iii) parsing an object into parts and relations (parts segmented by color), and (iv) generation of new concepts from related concepts. Taking inspiration from the way humans seem to learn, scientists have created AI software capable of picking up new knowledge in a far more efficient and sophisticated way. The new AI program can recognize a handwritten character about as accurately as a human can, after seeing just a single example. The best existing machine-learning algorithms, which employ a technique called deep learning, need to see many thousands of examples of…